Google Now's new Cards let you play music and interact with your TV

Google Now has undoubtedly become one of Android's most popular features, and the company continues to add improvements to Cards to make its contextual application increasingly capable. Today, Google introduced more new features for Google Now, including a live TV feature and Google Offers.

Google detailed the new Cards in a blog post on Android's Google Plus page today. TV Cards, as they're called, work with Internet-connected televisions to help bring up more information about what's on-screen. Users must connect their Android device to the same network the television is connected to and then tap the "Listen for a TV Show" Card in the Google Now application to look up more information. This feature will display items like show factoids and a profile of the actors in the cast.

For the thrifty, the Google Offers Card will help you keep track of your saved offers. When you're near a store you've clipped an offer for, this Card will send you a notification about the nearby savings. A third new feature will let Google Now users play music from their phone with a simple voice command—"Play" artist or song. This music function also supports third-party apps like Spotify and SoundCloud.

The new Cards are available with the most recent iteration of the Google Search application.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

Google Now is a popular feature??? who said??? the number of users using it??? It is installed by force on your android system.....

The only thing that actually works is weather (maybe :S -- weather doesn't change much throughout the day, so the updates don't have to change in a timely manner so it is hard for me to keep track).

They need to make the existing features of Google Now actually work before I start recommending others to use it.

Meeting notifications coming in late is a BIG NO NO.

I don't think I've had meeting notifications come in late. And everything else I use with Google Now has worked just fine - I get my NY Yankee and TX Ranger scores and schedule, I get navigation suggestions, and I get nearby events. I've turned off weather as I use a nice widget for that.

The only thing that hasn't worked well for me is the Flight info - but I don't fly much anymore and often use Flight Tracker when I do, so maybe I just did something wrong on that one.

Finally, 'play music,' a feature that should have been day one. The TV feature is pretty meh, but we don't have an internet connected TV,* nor do we watch live TV. That Offers card sounds neat, but that requires 'clipping coupons.'

Lots of meh for me. Heh.

*Actually, we do, but it's like the early days of internet connected TVs and it doesn't do much but frustrate the user

It enrages me whenever Google puts out new features that are only available in the US. I'm 2 hours north of the border and I can't use Google Music? Now I can't even use these little cards?

I get that localization might be a problem, but if you're an enormous multinational corporation and you're going to publish a service in English, you should bloody well publish it for the entire Anglosphere at the very least.

Google Now is a popular feature??? who said??? the number of users using it??? It is installed by force on your android system.....

The only thing that actually works is weather (maybe :S -- weather doesn't change much throughout the day, so the updates don't have to change in a timely manner so it is hard for me to keep track).

They need to make the existing features of Google Now actually work before I start recommending others to use it.

Meeting notifications coming in late is a BIG NO NO.

I don't think I've had meeting notifications come in late. And everything else I use with Google Now has worked just fine - I get my NY Yankee and TX Ranger scores and schedule, I get navigation suggestions, and I get nearby events. I've turned off weather as I use a nice widget for that.

The only thing that hasn't worked well for me is the Flight info - but I don't fly much anymore and often use Flight Tracker when I do, so maybe I just did something wrong on that one.

Everything else has worked great

Maybe I just get bad signal and Google Now relies too much on the cloud for it to be useful for me :S.

Odd in that it definitely used to work with the 2.1/2.2 phones and the native search app. One of the first things my girlfriend did when she got her old Optimus V was voice input > "play [band]" - I think it spun up a Pandora station based on that artist or something.

Is it just me, or could you use the "Play" feature on earlier versions? I'm pretty sure that I used it to play music from my Google Play Music archive and YouTube. Can anyone confirm it, if you haven't updated the app yet?

Not many features in Google Now works in other countries bar the weather card, Google need to put more into catering the international market in my opinion.

Definitely seconded - I'd like to hear more experiences from international readers, but at least here in .fi Google Now is practically useless. When the 4.1 update came to my S3, there were reccommendations for restaurants and bars for a while, but those seem to be gone now, and even then they were either places I already frequented or places I had no interest in. The weather card also can be either very inaccurate or just very optimistic - it has told be the weather is "clear" when it has been raining non-stop for a couple of hours. The only remotely useful feature I've found is that as I load an .ics file into my calendar that has all the games of the hockey team I follow, it will give me reminders when to leave for a game with driving directions. The thing is, I follow the games online, but should I be more of a fan that could be useful.

But what really irks me is the apparent lack of context awareness (ironic given the article title I guess). For example, a few weeks back I got biking directions to a location from Maps. Those were very good, mind you, it was able to figure a couple of very small tracks that made the trip much shorter than following major roads. But as I got there, I looked at my phone - and Now helpfully offers me directions back home. By car. One would assume if I used a bike to get somewhere, I'll do so to get back as well? Apparently Google knows better.

"Google Now has undoubtedly become one of Android's most popular features"

What is this claim based on? It strikes me as pure lazy journalism. UNDOUBTEDLY? MOST POPULAR?

Google Now is an interesting possibility, yes, a taste of the future. But I find it highly unlikely that it's one of Android's most popular features today, regardless of how you measure "popularity" or "features".

Just look at the comments above which are a long litany of complaints about how it works poorly outside the US, and even for many purposes inside the US.

Not available outside of USA, don't care. Same as 99% of Google Now (and almost everything Microsoft is doing these days). Seems like Apple is the only company that gives a shit about the world outside of USA, and I'd rather guzzle a bucket of runny shit than purchase an Apple product.